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Monday, June 20, 2005

Religious Beliefs.....and Trees

According to the religion I was born in (or should I say according to the famous religious practices!), one is expected to go to temples atleast a few times in a year and do what is supposed to be done in a temple (worship ofcourse?!) And since I happened to live in Triplicane (Thiruvalikeni - in Tamil, meaning "Sacred place with the Lilly pond", roughly!) for most of my life, under the bossom of protective godmen and godwomen and with blind faith , I never ever questioned this. So I was happy going to the Parthasarathy Temple every saturday and tried to look....Interested? Sincere? God-fearing? Proper? Lovely? yeeks, I meant Full of Love...! :))

But in recent times, I have totally lost interest in going to temples and actually disbelieve in that institution (Is that supposed to be used only with marriage??) And what brought this on? I have no clue except that I read this article on believing 'planting trees according to your birth star will make you healthy, wealthy and wise!'

The article, "Your star, your tree", talks about a civil contractor-turned horticulturist, Krishnamurthy, and his desire to create a green belt in Chennai. Mr. Krishnamurthy thought about this great idea (I think!) to get his wish fulfilled - simply tell the "Astrology crazy" people 'you got to plant this particular tree, according to your star, on important occasion for you to "go abraod, get money, get married..blah blah blah..."' and lo and behold the nurseries are going to make brisk business :)

For example, if you were born under the punarpusam star, you have to plant Bambusa or Moongil (in tamil). The logic here is easy enough to understand - each tree represents a star, which inturn has some personality traits associated with it. So if A=B, B=C & A=C then B=A! :)) (Work that out! It is definitely accurate, not just mathematically or whatever) And this is my very own intelligent explanation for further understanding- since you would be giving life to an entity similar to your personality/star, as the tree grows and lives happily, so will you! (Howzzzzz that????)

Strangely enough, I kinda believe this one :) If not the astrology connection, I at least believe and support the idea behind this project. Mr. Krishnamurthy, my sincere well wishes to you. I will surely try to plant a Bamboo sometime soon.

So what are you waiting for? Go plant a tree (Not just any tree though)! Be happy!

On a related and unconnected note (that's right I believe it can be related and unconnected at the same time!), if you are interested to know which tree you could be, this one according to your birthdate, check this out.